Smart in age-old student vs. teacher battle

Zachary Holden
Staff Writer

It’s not often you find a pair of coaches who can tolerate each other enough to call themselves friends. Even rarer do you find two coaches who consider themselves best friends.

Shaka Smart and Keith Dambrot, head coach at the University of Akron, are one of those pairs in college basketball.

“Keith is my best friend in coaching and I don’t have a lot of friends in coaching,” Smart said. “It’s a business where you just don’t have time to socialize a lot.”

Smart was an assistant coach at Akron from 2003-06 which is where he and Dambrot became friends. When Smart moved to VCU in 2009, he would have never thought of playing his former mentor as often as he has.

VCU and Akron have faced off four times since Smart took over in Richmond, with the Rams emerging victorious at all four meetings.

Now, they face off again. But this time, there’s a lot more at stake.

“When we found out we were playing Akron … my first conversation with him was ‘I still love you, man,’ and he said the same thing,” Smart said.

Thursday night at 9:45, the Rams will face the Zips in Auburn Hills, Mich. in the NCAA tournament in a “win or go home” scenario. Since Smart and Dambrot are so close, they are familiar with each other’s coaching style and even share some of the same plays.

The game is going to be a tough one for Smart to swallow, regardless of the outcome.

“After the game, it’ll be mixed emotions either way because his team is one of the three or four around the country that I really pull for and watch any time I (have a chance to),” Smart said.

Considering their close friendship, Smart said he and Dambrot have spoken to each other over the past couple years asking for advice on players and disclosing information they usually wouldn’t give to other teams.

“We’ve had some candid conversations about our teams,” Smart said. “Keith is very smart; he’s not going to tell you anything that he doesn’t want you to know.”

“Sometimes he’ll give you something just to mess with you. We talked yesterday and he said, ‘We didn’t even work against the press today,’” Smart said.

Smart’s HAVOC style of play is unique and something he developed, but Dambrot had a lot of influence on other aspects of Smart’s coaching. He said he holds Dambrot among the best coaches in the country.

“I’ve worked for some pretty good coaches … he’s as good as anyone I’ve been around,” Smart said.

“I learned a lot of valuable lessons from Keith; he taught me about spending time with players,” Smart said. “I’ve never been around a head coach that spends so much time with his players. That’s definitely something (I’ve) taken from him.”

What Dambrot has done for the Akron basketball program since taking over is something Smart said is “out of this world.”  Dambrot has taken the team to seven straight Mid-American Conference championship games, winning three along the way.

“He has single-handedly elevated that program and coaching job not just one notch, but several notches from where it was,” Smart said.

Senior point guard Darius Theus and his teammates said they know what this game means to their coach. While it is against an opponent they’ve faced before, there isn’t any different preparation than in previous years.

As for how Theus thinks it will impact Smart and Dambrot’s relationship, he said, “At the end of the day, I think they’ll still be friends, win or lose.”

Smart said the two friends try to get together whenever they can, be it at the Final Four or on the recruiting trail.

While Smart said he doesn’t get back to Akron as much as he’d like, whenever the two are close, they’ll meet up for dinner and – like true best friends – argue over who’s picking up the tab.